Just a girl learning to walk down God's moonlit path…

borderline personality disorder

I have been super excited for Sunday. I could not wait to sit down and have the time to think about how I did on my goals and what new ones to set. So without further ado I am going to write how I did on each goal below the goal. If you want to know why I set each goal you can take a look at last week’s post Here.
Last Week Goals:

1. I will visit my last attachment figures (lets call her Artemis) social media page only four times this week.
-I visited her page five times this week which is still a SIGNIFICANT decrease from the amount of times I was visiting her page before my goal. This week, this goal helped me see just how often I was running to her page for comfort and coping. At the same time I miss her so much. But do I miss “Object Artemis” or “Artemis Artemis.” Definitely both. There are moments where I am eager to share a new hair product or talk to her about something I only feel comfortable speaking with her about. Then there are moments where the emptiness feels like it’s going to swallow me and I wish she were there to set up tent inside of her. This month is her birthday and I know that the best thing I can do is not wish her happy birthday. I think because I am still so confused, she will sense that and even that minor complication on her birthday is not ok. I don’t want her to have to think about if she should say thank you and what both saying it and not saying it will mean. She knows I know it’s her birthday and she knows I love her and thats enough.

2. I will let Jupiter lead our interactions this week by mostly only interacting with her after she interacts with me.
-Yea I failed at this goal at the beginning of the week. BUT BUT BUT something else amazing happened that I don’t know how to explain. On Monday and Tuesday I offered some options for Jupiter and I to hang together and she agreed but didn’t follow up with it. There are lots of reasons as to why that is, but the most important thing is that despite me knowing that, I still felt rejected and HURT. I had a very emotional therapy session on Wednesday as a result. And in that session I was learning how to accept when another person doesn’t want the same things out of a relationship that I do. How that doesn’t mean that the person doesn’t want me or doesn’t love and care about me. But that what I want from them they just are not in a position to give.

I don’t think I quite understand this yet. During session I was just super confused as to what that meant because if what I want is for us to be close friends and she doesn’t want that then that means she doesn’t want me. Session ended with my therapist informing me that I just don’t know what I want. The following two days though something happened in me that I have never experienced with an attachment figure. Jupiter was talking to me about some of her insecurities in a close friendship of hers and I was being a safe space for her to talk and sharing ideas on how she could make the best out of that close friendship. And it wasn’t until after that I realized WAIT. I just spent the past hour hearing her talk about her love for her other friend and their closeness and not once did I ever get jealous. Heck, not once did I ever cross my mind. It was like my only concern or care was her, and how she was feeling and at the end of it, I just went on with my workday.

I genuinely and sincerely just cared about her. And whatever friendship role I was playing it just felt natural and contentful. I didn’t feel the need to push for more, neither did I feel insecure that because she has all of that love for her friend, there is not enough love or care for me. She wasn’t an object that I needed to gain, but a person that I truly saw and care about. The joy in my heart at this realization is bursting from out of me!!! I, am naturally and organically forming a real healthy friendship with someone that I initially unhealthily bonded too. Me, I am doing that. And because of that, Thursday and Friday I didn’t need to be conscious of this goal and how to actively do that. I knew who I was in the friendship, where I belonged, and just lived my life in that confidence. Does this mean I will never have BPD related issues with Jupiter now, idk, but I know that there is hope that BPD does not have to control my relationships.

3. I will choose one coworker this week and take time getting to know them a bit better.
– I did this! It was awesome getting to know someone else and experiencing how not every friendship has to be close but that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be superficial either.

This Weeks Goals:

1. I will visit Artemis Social Media Page only four times this week.
– I am keeping this goal because everything I wrote about last week concerning this goal still rings true. I am a lot more bonded to Artemis than any other attachment figure because for a period of time Artemis actually tried and succeeded at fulfilling the longings of my heart, though they are impossible to continuously fulfill. Nevertheless, it’s like with her I tasted how good life can be to have those needs met, and I struggle with deeply believing that it is not possible to get what I want, and I struggle with accepting that even if it were possible she will never want to be in my life in that capacity again. I gave myself to her more than I have ever given myself to anyone else and so forming a healthy bond to her is extremely hard and extremely painful because it feels like a lot of loss. In therapy I try not to talk about her often because there are other parts of my life that need healing, but when she does come up it’s one of the rare times my therapist sees me cry because the emotions that come with her are overwhelming.

So again, my head wants to have a healthy bond with her because it understands how much more satisfying healthy is. Parts of my heart want a healthy bond because it loves her as she is. But the part of my heart where that lil girl resides very much would still be throwing tantrums and acting out if I let her, at the thought of having Artemis in a capacity less than what she experienced and wants. So with Artemis the baby steps are very much impactful. And if I can start lessening the dependence through less interaction on her page, then I am doing good.

2. I will be in control of my happiness not people.
– With my recent victory concerning Jupiter. I have to be careful of not allowing my interactions with her determine if I am happy or sad. I am going to set the tone for the kind of day I want to have and operate out of that.

I’m only setting two goals this week and am excited to see what I learn from them!

Yesterday I woke up knowing it would be a hard day. After work I found my strength wavering and tears falling as I rode the train home and texted a friend to ask for 45 undivided minutes because I felt a surge of things needing to be poured out. Immediately she called, she didn’t know I was crying or that I was feeling so low, but i’m thankful for friends that don’t need for me to be dying in order to be present. I sat in a park and poured my heart out, mostly in tears, explaining that I just don’t understand why a part of me can’t let go. I wake up every day and do what i’m suppose too, but I always feel like i’m just living to push through instead of actually living, which always leaves me questioning what’s the point.
At the end of our talk, I realized and decided that if I want to see even more improvement then I need to push myself to do even more than just the bare minimum. Living for the minimum is empty and I will always feel purposeless, so I need to push myself to do more, and I left the park determined to do so.

Then just like that I stumbled upon a picture of the person i’ve been actively avoiding on my instagram explore page. A rush of pain just consumed me. My stomach went numb and I could feel the tingling. My legs began shaking uncontrollably. Alligator tears were just falling unprovoked. My mind felt like it was drowning and the only thoughts coming to the surface were, hurt yourself. Before, these thoughts were immediately acted upon before I even had time to register what was happening. However, I have grown better through continued therapy, so I texted my therapist and did the best thing I knew to calm me while I waited for her to call me, I rocked as I sung “Jesus be the center of my life.” As I waited, God was with me reminding me that we are a team, that I just have to ride it out, keep breathing, keep rocking, keep circling the scrunchie through my hands (repetitive motions are extremely comforting for me idk why).

My therapist called and my main question was why does seeing her with people she loves instantaneously drive me to this point? And she eloquently and accurately explained to me that simply put it makes me feel rejected, abandoned, and betrayed. I see her with all this love that she can dole out to others and feel betrayed that none of that love can be doled out to me anymore. Then she continued to say that, “whether you agree or not, you were traumatized and you just never built any tolerance to handling abandonment, or rejection in that form. The tolerance is just not there sweetie, and wanting it to not be so won’t change it.”

I calmed and this got me thinking about trauma. Out of I guess pride and desire to always NOT be a statistic, I NEVER allowed myself to believe that my dad’s passing affected me. I thought it shameful and disgusting to call myself traumatized when people experience “real” traumas daily. But what if the shameful and disgusting thing is my pride that keeps me from accepting this reality as my own? That i’m not as resilient or strong or better than the “statistics.”

In an effort to do things differently in order to begin to see different results, I am going to accept the reality that I experienced something that I never understood or learned to process, and that is why I can’t understand or process it now. If any of the nine year olds I work with experienced what I did, I would immediately feel heartbroken for them out of sheer intuitive understanding that a loss like that is devastating. I watch my kids, especially the girls, run to their fathers during dismissal. I listen as they recount stories of where their dad brought them for their birthday, or the gifts they bring back from traveling. Now that I think about it they don’t talk about their moms. I know the occupations of some of their fathers through the awe insipred retelling of a child. And when they run to their dad, I think, that was me.

My memories are all but obliterated of me and my dad. Up until recently i thought i barely knew the man. But thats trauma. My sisters and mother tell me about how he was the only person I was close to. The only one I wanted to spend time with. The only one i’d eat dinner with, and sometimes I think I feel certain memories coming back.

But they must be right because the memory that never goes away was how on August 17th we had a bbq and I was sitting at my dads feet waiting for him to give me the rest of his champagne cola. My mother was telling me to let him drink and get another one but I ignored her, patiently waiting for the drink that always came. Then on August 18th I stood and watched him struggle to breathe. Front row and center, everyone panicking too much to notice I was there and maybe remove me. He struggled and struggled as my mom tried to get the asthma machine down his throat. He was making noises and grabbing at his throat, he began to defecate himself, and I just stood there glued to the ground. Slowly his color changed, and then supported by my mom his lifeless body fell off the chair to the ground. He layed there until the morgue people came, zipped him in his black bag then took him away. I next saw him in the open casket in his suit and tie, then finally sealed away in his tomb.

I can’t conjure up feelings where they don’t exist. I didn’t mourn then and i’m not mourning now. I simply exist with this as my reality. But it’s a reality that I have to give its credit for who I am now if I have any hope of a different future. Maybe just maybe my therapist is right, “My psyche finds strangers to turn into surrogate parents, knowing they will fail, to recreate the trauma and allow me to mourn safely.” I’m not a therapist, I don’t know why the heck a psyche would want to recreate trauma, but looking over the course of my life it looks like thats been my ONLY purpose in life, recreating trauma. Heaping impossible demands on people so they can fail and I can try to “fix it” so that they don’t fail and they don’t leave, because I couldn’t fix what happened when i was nine. But they always fail.